FAQ

Getting started

• What Amibroker versions are supported?

• I installed the plugin and created the database but nothing appears on the screen

• Where can I reach the commands of the plugin?

• Does the plugin save the downloaded data after registration?

• How long historical data is available in the registered version of the plugin?

• Can't set the indian time shift (+5:30) to Amibroker. What should I do?

Charts

• I installed the plugin and created the database but nothing appears on the screen.

• I added a symbol to the database but still no chart is visible on the screen

• Not all the bars got downloaded to Amibroker, older bars are missing

• The downloaded chart looks completely different than what is available for investing.com or tradingview.com website

• Why does Amibroker show delayed data?

• I have created an intraday database and the chart shows only some bars after switching to daily view.

• Only some bars are visible in an intraday view of a mixed Intraday/EOD database.

• No bars displayed in 1min/5min charts but 15min/hourly/EOD data is shown by Amibroker

• Volume bars are missing! (investing.com plugin)

• Something is wrong with the chart (missing data, wrong open/close/high/low price or volume,...)

• My charts receive no update OR it has completely incorrect bars

• Why don't my charts automatically update in my database?

• Why the "Wait for backfill" option is not supported in scanner/explorer/back test?

Bulk chart update

• What is Bulk chart update?

• What is Quick update?

• Where can I schedule a daily bulk chart update?

• Bulk chart update does not start

Licensing

• What are the advantages of the registration?

• Where can I find the serial number for the registration?

• How long does it take to get the registration key after purchasing the plugin?

• My license key does not work.

• Do I have to buy more than one license when I want to use on my laptop, on my desktop computer and at my workspace?

• Do I need to request a new system key when I change my system?

• What is an additional license?

• Why is there an administrative fee?

• What if I ask for refund?

More

• Do you have plugin for MT4?

What Amibroker versions are supported?

• Depends on the plugin: investing.com and tradingview.com plugin requires 5.27+, yahoo and bamosz plugin 3.8+.

I installed the plugin and created the database but nothing appears on the screen.

• Please make sure you have added any ticker to the Amibroker database. You can easily add a ticker by entering it in the combobox on the toolbar and pressing Enter. You can add whole markets with some clicks by choosing the "Import symbol info" command from the context menu of the plugin.

• Check the system requirements: TradingView plugin requires at least Windows 8 or higher!

• Check your firewall settings. Perhaps you have blocked the internet traffic for Amibroker in the past. Allow Amibroker through the Firewall.

• Test your firewall settings when it still does not work:

  1. Make a temporary copy of your Amibroker folder. (C:\Program files\Amibroker - by default).

  2. Run Amibroker from the new folder.

  3. Open your database.

  4. The problem is still with your firewall settings if chart are visible now!

  5. (You can delete the temporarily copied Amibroker folder)

I added a symbol to the database but still no chart is visible on the screen.

• Make sure you have added a valid ticker

• Tradingview/Investing.com plugin: Make sure you have associated the ticker with the right ID.
  (use the symbol info editor from the plugin's context menu)

• Check the system requirements: TradingView plugin requires at least Windows 8 or higher!

• Check your firewall settings. Perhaps you have blocked the internet traffic for Amibroker in the past.

• Test your firewall settings when it still does not work:

  1. Make a temporary copy of your Amibroker folder. (C:\Program files\Amibroker - by default).

  2. Run Amibroker from the new folder.

  3. Open your database.

  4. The problem is still with your firewall settings if chart are visible now!

  5. (You can delete the temporarily copied Amibroker folder)

Where can I reach the commands of the plugin?

• Right-click on the status bar of the plugin's area. It is a colored rectangular part at the bottom-right of Amibroker's main window.

Does the plugin save the downloaded data after registration?

• Plugin does not affect on how Amibroker saves your data to disk. If you have a registered Amibroker all the data will be saved whether you have registered or unregistered version of my plugins.

What are the advantages of the registration?

• Without registering the plugin it works only in demo mode: only the most recent 100 bars are visible in your Amibroker. After registration you will be able to download the whole history that is available at the data provider.

Where can I find the serial number for the registration?

• The serial number is in the middle of the dialog that pops up right after opening the database.

Do I have to buy more than one license when I want to use on my laptop, on my desktop computer and at my workspace?

• Yes, one license is valid only for one computer.

How long does it take to get the registration key after purchasing the plugin?

• Mostly it takes only some minutes or hours but sometimes I can send it only in the next morning (GMT+2).

• Please check your spam folder if you do not receive the registration key within 24 hours!

What is an additional license?

• Extra features require additional license over the plain registration. E.g: bulk chart update may overload the servers of the data providers, that's why I don't want to include this feature in the basic (and cheap) license.

• This license is valid only for the plugin with the given serial number.

How long historical data is available in the registered version of the plugin?

• It depends on the plugin, the symbol and the symbol's time interval. You can check the available data by visiting the given symbol on the provider's website. Do it with the "Open symbol's page" or "View chart in browser" commands. (If you are using investing.com plugin you have to check the Streaming chart!). Zoom out as much as you can. Now you see exactly the same length chart what you will have in your Amibroker with the registered plugin version.

My license key does not work.

Make sure that the key file name is the same as the plugin dll name. Sometimes the key file is renamed when downloading from e-mail if you have previously downloaded a key file with the same name.

E.g: rename "AmiDataInvesting (1).key" to "AmiDataInvesting.key"

Can't set the indian time shift (+5:30) to Amibroker. What should I do?

• Amibroker does not support quarters and half an hours to set as time shift. But for your request I have added this feature to the Investing.com and Tradingview plugin. Choose the Database settings from the Amibroker's File menu, press the Configure button, and fill the Extended Time Shift value.

Not all the bars got downloaded to Amibroker, older bars are missing.

• Set the "Number of bars" to a large number in the database settings. (100.000+)

• TradingView plugin: enter your username and password in the plugin configuration dialog if you have a valid TradingView.com PRO (!) subscription.

• If you still have less bars in Amibroker than in the charts of investing.com or tradingview.com, please make sure you compare charts on website with the same time interval what you have created the database with. (Database settings: Base time interval!)

Amibroker makes time compression on bars when you switch to a higher timeframe!

For details: How does the intraday-to-daily compression work?

Example: if you have 1000 bars in a 15min database (15 min is the base time interval!), and you switch to daily view, you will see only 11 bars.
Notes#1: For the sake of simplicity, I count on a 24-hour market.
Explanation:
- Amibroker generates the daily chart from the 15min bars.
- 1 hour is 4 x 15 minutes and one day is 24 hours, so Amibroker compresses (4 x 24) pieces of 15 min bars to 1 daily bar.
- The result: the 1000 pieces of 15min bars will be compressed to 1000/(4 x 24) = 10.4 daily bars. -> 11 bars will be visible on a daily view, generated from the 15 min database data.
Notes: This is also true for intraday data, such as switching to hourly view.

• If you want to have a database which shows long historical data in Intraday and EOD/Weekly/Monthly view as well, I recommend that you set the Mixed EOD/Intraday database option in the Intraday settings of Amibroker.(Choose the Database settings command from the File menu, click on the Intraday settings button, check the Allow mixed EOD/Intraday data.)

Once again: please always set the "Number of bars" value to a large number to have enough space for intraday and EOD data!

The downloaded chart looks completely different than what is available for investing.com or tradingview.com.

• Make sure you have added the right ticker.

• Tradingview/Investing.com plugin: Make sure you have associated the ticker with the correct ID.
  (use the symbol info editor from the plugin's context menu)

• Do not import data from other sources! Their timestamps may be incompatible and may result an incorrect chart.

Why does Amibroker show delayed data?

TradingView.com/Investing.com/Yahoo Finance / ... only provides delayed data for certain markets. Please always check the delay on their website for the markets you are interested in before purchasing the plugins!
However, for these markets, the Tradingview plugin can download real-time data if you have a real-time data subscription on tradingview.com and enter your credentials in the plugin's configuration dialog.

I have created an intraday database and the chart shows only some bars after switching to daily view.

• Enable the "Allow mixed EOD/Intraday data" option from the File menu -> Database settings -> Intrday settings.

Only some bars are visible in an intraday view of a mixed Intraday/EOD database.

The EOD data takes up too much space in the quote buffer and there is little space left for intraday data.

• Pause the data download.

• Increase the bar count in the database settings dialog

• Delete all the intraday data with the quote editor (You can also delete the EOD data between them)

• Resume the download

No bars displayed in 1min/5min charts but 15min/hourly/EOD data is shown by Amibroker.

• Perhaps no data provided for the given symbol on the selected time interval. Check the available time intervals on the website of the data provider. (See above)

Volume bars are missing! (investing.com plugin)

Mostly this problems reported when a user have been created a database with 1 minute base time interval and switched to 5 or 15 minute view.

Please note: switching to 5/15 minute view will not change the data source you are using: Amibroker still downloads 1 minute data and compresses into 5 or 15 minute bars. So, if the data provider (investing.com, yahoo.com, ...) does not provide volume information for 1 minute time interval, you'll neither have volume bars when you switch to 5 or 15 minute view!

• Check the streaming charts of the symbol on investing.com (Use the "View chart in browser" command from the plugin's context menu on the status bar). Make sure you look exactly the same the time interval what you have created the database with!

In most cases investing.com does not provide volume information for the given symbol on the base time interval you have created the database with.

Solution:

• Create another database with the base time interval you are interested.

Something is wrong with the chart (missing data, wrong open/close/high/low price or volume,...)

• Check the streaming charts of the symbol on investing.com (Use the "View chart in browser" command from the plugin's context menu on the status bar). Make sure you look exactly the same time interval what you have created the database with!

Mostly the wrong data comes from the data provider and you can also see the same problem on their website. This is not a plugin issue. Later you can fix the chart manually (after the data provider fixed the wrong data) by using the Quote Editor of Amibroker:

• Pause the data downloading in the context menu of the plugin

• Open Quote Editor

• Select and delete the most recent - including the wrong - data

• Close Quote Editor and resume data downloading: the plugin will download the most recent - now the fixed - data again

My charts receive no update OR it has completely incorrect bars.

If you already have downloaded charts in your database and you change the database settings frequently ((E.g: when you use the same database what you have created during testing the demo version) it is possible that your database may be got "stucked".

• Please create a new database with the same settings.

Why don't my charts automatically update in my database?

Because Amibroker requests data from the plugin only in the following cases:

• When a symbol is opened in a view.

• When you run scanner/explorer/backtest command with the "Wait for backfill" option enabled. It is not supported by the plugin. Why?

Please read the "What is bulk chart update?" section.

Why is the "Wait for backfill" option not supported in scanner/explorer/back test?

With my plugins the scanner/explorer/back test works only with the downloaded data.

• These Amibroker commands can run up to 32 simultaneous downloader threads in every second per Analysis window.

• Amibroker is able to repeat the scanning/exploring periodically. I’m sure many would take advantage of the opportunity and run these features for hours or even 24 hours a day.

• Moreover, Amibroker can be started in multiple instances...

That’s exactly why I can’t support the "Wait for backfill" option: the servers could be overloaded if the users of my plugins run these features at the same time because Amibroker would send thousands of requests per second for 24 hours a day from all over the world.

What is bulk chart update? Additional license is required!

• Bulk chart update makes it possible to update multiple charts in the Amibroker database without user interaction. You don't need to click on symbols one-by-one to download the most recent quote data for all your symbols. Please watch the tutorial video here.

• Use the standard Windows selection methods in the pop-up dialog list to select the symbols you want to update
  How Do I Select Multiple Items With Shift-Click?
  - Ctrl+A (select all), and
  - Shift+Ctrl+Click is also supported

• This feature is made to keep your database updated and not to update your database frequently (E.g: every 15 minutes). You can start bulk chart update manually in every 15 minutes but there is no way to automatically repeat.
  This limitation is due to the same reason that the "Wait for backfill" option is not supported.

What is Quick update?

• Enabling the quick update makes the bulk chart update faster BUT the downloaded data remains in the plugins memory without waiting for Amibroker to retrieve the data from it. Updating hundreds or thusands of symbols will take much less time

• It is usefull if you want to run a scanner/explorer or backtest on freshly updated charts.

• Attention: Your downloaded data will be lost if you exit from Amibroker without processing the updated symbols with a scanner/explorer or backtest!

Where can I schedule a daily bulk chart update?

• You can set a scheduled time in the plugin's configuration dialog. (File menu, Database settings, "Configure" button)

Bulk chart update does not start.

• This feature requires additional license. What is an additional license?

• Bulk chart update can run when only one Amibroker is running. If you get an error message but there is no more running Amibroker on your desktop, please check the Task Manager, maybe another Amibroker instance remains in the background: find the stuck Amibroker(s), select, and click on the "End task" button. After that, the command should start.

Do I need to request a new system key when I change my system?

Your existing license will still be valid if you only reinstall Amibroker. Formatting your system or upgrading your Windows may cause problems but you will not have to pay the whole amount again, only an administration fee, BUT only when your last registration key was sent in 3 months. Over 3 months the replacement key is free. Please read the next - Why is there an administrative fee? - section for details.

Why is there an administrative fee?

• Request a new registration key for an existing license within three months of obtaining the previous one
  A lot of people have asked me from the beginning to send a new key due system reinstallation or hardware replacement. That’s okay, that’s how things work. BUT on many occasions, after a few days or weeks of use, users turn to me several times in a row with the same problem: I’m sorry, but it’s not my responsibility to keep anyone’s malfunctioning computer system constantly maintained.

• Remote assistance due to lack of Amibroker or IT knowledge
  The other problem comes from a lack of knowledge of the basics of Amibroker or Windows usage. I'm pretty sure the website, the FAQ and the tutorial videos contain all the information you need to know how to use my plugins. Sorry, it is not my job to teach how to use Windows and Amibroker. Requesting assistance because of lack of IT or Amibroker knowledge also needs paying an administration fee.

The administrations and assistants mentioned above consume a lot of time and energy in case of having hundreds of users. My goal with the introduction of the fee is not to charge you with more money, but to reduce the number of cases when I carry the consequences as an innocent party.

What if I ask for refund?

PayPal has changed their policy: the amount of the refund is the paid money minus the fee that PayPal charges me.

Do you have plugin for MT4?

• Unfortunately, I don't. I will try to develop it ASAP when I have a little spare time.